Wednesday, August 30, 2017

I recently got back from a more than two thousand mile trip, from San Diego up to Rexburg, Idaho, near Idaho Falls. The reason, of course, was to observe the Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017. It was the first time I'd actually seen a total eclipse. Way back when I was a student at Northwestern, my buddy and I took a Greyhound bus from Chicago to the Florida panhandle, near Tallahassee, to see the total solar eclipse of March 7, 1970. We got there with a few hours to spare, and found a park where lots of telescopes had been set up. Unfortunately, it was cloudy. We saw the shadow approaching on the clouds, we saw it get dark. We saw the edge of the shadow, we saw it get light again. And then we got back on the bus for the two day trip home.

As everyone knew, for this eclipse hotel rooms and campgrounds anywhere near the path of totality were long sold out. A few rooms, the kind that would normally go for about $75, were offered at $400, $600, or more. We ended up sleeping in our cars, as planned, for just one night. We found a nice temporary eclipse campsite set up on private land, with porta-potties (the most important concern!). We looked at the map in Fred Espenak's Road Atlas for the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017. As best we could tell, we were sitting right on top the eclipse's center line. One fellow consulted some high-precision NASA eclipse map, then his GPS, and announced we were one-quarter mile south of the exact center. He proposed to walk up there to observe the eclipse right on the center line. I replied that this was close enough for me. The duration of the total phase would be 2 minutes, 18 seconds.

And closer....

Rexburg, Idaho: totality is getting close...

Ta-da!!!! The solar corona is clearly visible. The star Regulus is seen near the bottom, at left.

And this time, the weather in Idaho was just perfect on eclipse day. I set up an Orion SkyScanner 100mm Dobsonian scope with a Thousand Oaks solar filter, which gave crisp images of the partially eclipsed sun. The solar filter comes off during totality, and I saw extremely fine detail in the solar corona. I had the impression I was seeing some sort of bizarre neon display, such was the color and texture of the corona. The star Regulus was conspicuous, twinkling rapidly. Then I moved over to the Canon 20d DSLR camera, and snapped these photos using a 200mm zoom lens.

Solar prominences are visible at the top just as totality is ending, and we see the "Diamond ring".

So far as I am aware, nobody reported seeing any UFOs during totality, unlike the major total solar eclipse in Mexico City in 1991 (see chapter 21 of my book UFO Sightings). As soon as totality had ended (third contact), I heard vehicles starting and quickly driving off. They were trying to beat the expected heavy traffic. We stayed until the eclipse had actually ended; very few others did that. We could see highway US 20 from our campsite, and the southbound direction, toward Idaho Falls, quickly became congested, traffic practically at a standstill. It remained that way for about two hours. When we saw that traffic was moving again, we got on the road, but encountered more congestion on the way to Idaho Falls, where we stopped to eat dinner.

Idaho Falls

After taking a little tour of the park by the falls, we got on I-15 heading south. The closest hotel reservation I could get at a normal price for that evening was in Tremonton, Utah, just south of the Idaho state line. The drive from Idaho Falls normally takes about two hours. That evening, it took six.

The visual observations and film are not satisfactorily explained in terms of aircraft, radar chaff, or insects, or balloons though the films alone are consistent with birds. Observations of birds near Tremonton indicate that the objects are birds, and the case cannot be said to establish the existence of extraordinary aircraft.

I didn't see any flocks of birds around Tremonton, but I suspect Dr. Hartmann is correct, although many UFOlogists today would disagree.

This year's problems began with a big controversy over John Ventre, MUFON's Pennsylvania State Director. Ventre already had a reputation for not being the sharpest blade in the drawer, for example suggesting that Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared because it was abducted by extraterrestrials. In May Ventre posted some racist comments on social media, and when challenged on them, he did not back down. He instead went on a bizarre rant about how UFOs are actually "demonic" and claimed that the people who came out against his racist rant were in fact a conspiracy of atheists and ancient astronaut theorists who have been deceived into worshiping demons. At first MUFON director Jan Harzan disavowed all responsibility or concern for Ventre's postings on social media, despite the general consternation about them. Finally, Harzan wrote,

After discussion with MUFON Leadership it has been determined that it is in the best interest of both MUFON and Mr. Ventre that he be removed as State Director of Pennsylvania. This is effective immediately. MUFON does not condone racial discrimination in any form and has always provided equal opportunity to all regardless of race, religion, sex, age or national origin and will proudly continue to do so.

Ramtha, a 35,000 Year old Lemurian Warrior, is a MUFON Insider.

But Ventre still apparently remains as a member of MUFON's Inner Circle, another MUFON absurdity that has received absolutely no attention until just now.

The
Inner Circle status is attained with a donation of $5,000 or more.
Whether you have had a UFO sighting or are just interested in UFOs, you
are welcome to join. With your donation comes all of the perks and
benefits offered by the title.

Inner Circle members
provide advisory guidance to MUFON and are included in annual conference
calls, attend private functions during the Symposium, and afforded
reserved seating at MUFON events, and much more!

So that's it: all it takes to become a member of
MUFON's Inner Circle is to contribute at least $5,000 a year. In
addition to Harzan and Ventre, J. Z. Knight - famous for her
supposed "channeling" of a 35,000 year old warrior from Lemuria named
"Ramtha" - is also a member of MUFON's Inner Circle, and presumably
provides "advisory guidance" to the organization. Knight has been accused of unleashing "drunken racist homophobic rants" to her large following.

Another bone of contention was the blatantly unscientific and irrational content announced for MUFON's 2017 Symposium in Las Vegas, the "Case for a Secret Space Program." In the weeks leading up to the Symposium, rumors were flying about a supposed "disclosure announcement" that was supposed to occur in conjunction with the Symposium. Of course, nothing of the kind occurred.

I want to make this point as clear as I can. My opinions (and yours, for that matter) don’t mean very much. What matters is the evidence that can be brought forward for these stories. I hold it as possible that there is something in these accounts that is true. After all, I believe that radical technology is being withheld from us. I believe the ARV [Alien Reproduction Vehicle] story and more. But if a story gives me no chance to confirm or deny its basic claims, then it’s essentially useless to me as a researcher.

This is from the website of Michael Salla, one of the speakers at this year's MUFON Symposium.

Rich
Hoffman was MUFON's State Director for Alabama and Assistant
Director for Mississippi. He has been a member of MUFON since the
organization began in 1969. Without making any public statements, he
resigned from those positions, as well as his staff-level position as
MUFON's Director of Strategic Projects. When I asked him for his reasons, he
cited the blatantly unscientific nature of this year's Symposium, and his concern that MUFON keeps moving farther away from genuine scientific investigations. MUFON should be concentrating on investigating fewer but better cases, he suggested, instead of casting a bigger net to drag in larger numbers of sightings of lights in the sky and other low-grade cases. Hoffman has a "real job" working for a defense contractor, and while he sometimes finds it difficult to justify his leadership position in an organization that investigates UFOs, he found it impossible to defend belonging to an organization suggesting that there is a "secret space program," and that people are being teleported to Mars.

long-term burnout and a growing
sense that MUFON as a serious UFO investigative organization no longer
exists. I suspect that I am not the only State Director suffering from a
deep malaise while watching MUFON become an income-generating
enterprise. The triggering event for me was the lack of an immediate
dismissal of John Ventre from his State Directorship after his racist
outburst on Facebook, or at least an immediate statement that Ventre’s
comments were not acceptable coming from a leader of MUFON.

Researcher Nick Redfern was
labeled a "hater" by Harzan for objecting to Ventre's rant; Redfern
then severed all ties with MUFON. Following all this, UFO researcher and
filmmaker Paul Kimball wrote on his blog of the "complete implosion of MUFON."

When Harzan was interviewed on Kevin Randle's podcast, he spoke of the need to balance the needs of the organization with fidelity to sources and scientific accuracy. In other words, MUFON's membership doesn't want to hear caveats and uncertainties - they want exciting stories about aliens, and they will drift away if they don't get them.

It is difficult to predict what the future holds for MUFON. Harzan is a businessman, and will do what he must to increase revenues. I suspect that we will see a lot more "retail UFOlogy" (bread and circuses for the crowd), and less "serious investigation" - of which there has been precious little of late.

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About Me

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds. He is one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, a founding member of the UFO Subcommittee of the well-known Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP). He is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics' group in the San Francisco Bay area .
Mr. Sheaffer has written the "Psychic Vibrations" column in The Skeptical Inquirer for over 30 years, and his book "Psychic Vibrations" reprints some of those columns. He is also the author of "UFO Sightings" (Prometheus Books, 1998), and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others.
Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California. He has worked as a data communications engineer in the Silicon Valley, and sings in professional opera productions.